| The Australian state of Victoria has pledged that from 2011 all new cars will have to be equipped with ESC. This move is a cornerstone of the Victorian Goverment's "arrive alive 2008-2017" road safety strategy which was unveiled on 6 February by Premier John Brumby.
Brumby wants to take ESC further in Australia. He said that he will write to all State and Territory Premiers and the Prime Minister, calling for a national mandate of ESC. Victoria, an internationally recognised leader in road safety, will also introduce ESC to the Government fleet over the next three years, giving manufacturers an incentive to deploy ESC to all cars.
Beside the mandatory introduction of ESC, other strategies in "arrive alive 2008-2017" include:
- tougher drink driving laws
- more driver education,
- passenger restrictions for P-plate (provisional) drivers
- mandatory instalment of head protection technology such as side-curtain airbags in all new cars built by 2012.
It is hoped that these measures will help to achieve the Government's targets for a 30% reduction in the road death toll and similar reduction in serious injuries by the end of 2017.
The new strategy follows on from the success of Victoria’s first "arrive alive" strategy which prevented around 580 deaths over the five years to 2007.
As for the EU, speaking at a Forum for the Automobile and Society event in February, Vice-President of the European Commission Günter Verheugen stressed that the Europe will use the UNECE’s international standardisation effort to ensure that ESC is in all vehicles in future.
He also said that more should be done to unlock the potential of optimised traffic management and infrastructure and that the public should be made more aware of the benefits of ecodriving.
On the same day as Verheugen’s speech the European Parliament discussed the benefits of eSafety systems like eCall and ESC.
MEP Zita Gurmai, presented her views on the European Commission’s report on intelligent cars to the Parliament’s Transport Committee. The key topic discussed in the Committee was how to make consumers aware of the benefits that eSafety technologies can bring and how to make sure that the dealers inform the consumers sufficiently at the point of sale.
ESC and eCall were mentioned as the two most important technologies needing support at the moment but also education of drivers was mentioned as an area that needs more focus. The Parliament will decide on the final amendments to the Commission report at its June 2008 plenary.
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